Posted
by
kdawson
on Thursday April 26, 2007 @10:12AM
from the but-not-from-Apple dept.

Sean Jackson writes "Fastmac has beaten Apple to the Blu-Ray punch and has a new slimline Blu-Ray drive that works in PowerBooks, iBooks, Mac Minis, the MacBook Pro 17", and a few other systems. It's pricey ($800), but you have to admit that burning 45 GB is pretty sweet. Here are technical specs. Fastmac says that playing Blu-Ray movies isn't currently supported since there is no software player. However, several solutions are in the works and there is always a chance OS X 10.5 will support playing movies. Perhaps this means that Apple isn't far behind and will be offering Blu-Ray with the next MacBook and MacBook Pro revisions."

However, several solutions are in the works and there is always a chance OS X 10.5 will support playing movies. Perhaps this means that Apple isn't far behind and will be offering Blu-Ray with the next MacBook and MacBook Pro revisions.

Perhaps, but it's purely speculation. There's a chance that OS X 10.5 will also come with a full installation of Windows Vista included in the box. Perhaps this means that Apple is planning on buying Microsoft.

See the problem with drawing conclusions from items that are pure speculation to begin with?

Blu-ray support in Mac is a reasonable assumption. Apple buying Microsoft is not. What's the difference? The probability of it happening. You or a 5 year-old may think that probability can be reduced to "yes", "no" and "maybe", but actually it is a whole continuum of values between 0 and 1.

Well, I've read reports that the Leopard builds do support the version of UDF necessary to read HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks. Under Tiger you need something like ReadDVD! [softarch.com]. (I'm currently looking for reviews of that software with an eye toward using it with the XBOX 360 HD-DVD drive.)

DVD Studio Pro lets you build HD-DVDs, but at present burning them only to DVD recordable media in a readable file system, or to a directory on a hard drive. Apple's DVD Player will play them or play from a readable directory. I

I had a 1X SCSI CD burner that cost 3000GBP (about $6000) and required the original gold discs which cost GBP10 each ($20).In those days, there was no burn-free style tech, unless you were using a high end unix box you couldnt do anything else while it was burning or you'd produce a coaster, and burning a whole disc took about 80 minutes.There was also no multi session, and you had to produce the ISO image first and then burn it... So you needed nearly 700mb of free hdspace in which to produce your image, i

True, but every time something appears on Macs before PC's, the Mac fanbois all come running out to make sure everyone knows that Apple did it first.

Personally I want to see Blu Ray everywhere, but that's just my preference and has been since before it started to look like Blu Ray was winning the format war. The jury is still out but it looks like that trend will continue, especially with the PS/3 picking up some steam and now this development.

MOD PARENT DOWN.People with the maturity of a 10 year old say crap like that.Dismissing a technology just because you personally hate Sony is ridiculous.

People who are unbiaised would say BluRay:

- is technically the most superior i.e. highest capacity per layer- has the widest support from companies including vital content creation ones like Adobe and Apple- has an open source platform underpinning it i.e. Sun Java- has the support of Sony who clearly is more Linux friendly than Microsoft

What the heck would you use this for? I doubt you're going to burn 45Gb while on the move, and for backup purposes HDs are way cheaper. Of course you need to rotate them, but then again I wouldn't expect a consumer-grade BR-W (sp?) to last longer than a couple of years.

Harddrives are notoriously prone to failure. Plus, you can't stash four or five in a briefcase or the average laptop bag... Grabbin g the data off the disks would be a tedious process of unhooking and rehooking up an external drive. Even with the ATA overhead, the bluray drive might be faster.

Of course you can stash four or five... Let's see one DVD is 45 Gigs? I have two 2.5 Hard disks which is about the size of four or five CD's, and that stores at least 320 Gigs. With five BluRay I have 225 Gigs... Considering that 2.5 drives will cost you less than 200 USD I think hard disks are the better buy....Regarding failure... Not true. I know for the past five years all I do is buy two drives per year, and copy the old information to the new drives. Beats any other backup system on price, performance

OK, ignoring the cost of the BD drive, which we'll assume you only need to buy once, per-GB the BD is cheaper. However, assuming you don't use unlimited BDs, then you you are cost effective with BDs, only if you have to have simultaneous backup of up to X GB:529 +.22x =.26x -> 529 =.04x -> 13,225 = x

So, you must need at least 13TB of backup at any given time for BD to be more effective in terms of cost. (NOTE: if you do a rolling backup, you'll never reach this, and unless the BDs are -RW, they'll probably not be cost-effective)

And I'm petty sure 10 optical disks are about the same size standard HD or larger. With a good/small enclosure, you'll still have less space than 15BDs, and you only need one enclusre, just swap the drives. Heck you can get a dongle type setup that doesn't even require the enclosure.

So, HDs have space/and/ cost advantages in several (but not all) situations).

So, HDs have space/and/ cost advantages in several (but not all) situations).

If you get a good enclosure they're closer to $40, then you need at least two of them for RAID, you need controllers to drive them - if that's USB you're stuck at slow rates, if it's e.SATA you have expensive controllers and/or port limitations. Now you need to handle hot-swapping effectively for hard drives which takes some admin experience or an expensive hard drive shelf.

If you get a good enclosure they're closer to $40, then you need at least two of them for RAID, you need controllers to drive them - if that's USB you're stuck at slow rates, if it's e.SATA you have expensive controllers and/or port limitations. Now you need to handle hot-swapping effectively for hard drives which takes some admin experience or an expensive hard drive shelf.

I got a good/fast enclosure with USB, Firewire and eSATA for $30 with shipping and handling. It's extremely fast and reliable.

Umm, you can fit Blue-Ray disks in a case the size of 2 HDD. That's ~1125Gigs. But HDD tend to die a lot easer than disks. And you don't need external power to access them. After all the point of a laptop is portability vs. showing up with 2 external drives that need power.

My external hard drive (120gb) has been good for well over two years now. Plus, I've dropped the thing several times. I never had a cd-rw work for more than a few weeks or a dvd-rw for a few days due to scratches.

Plus, you can't stash four or five in a briefcase or the average laptop bag

And cds/dvds are notoriously prone to scratches.My external hard drive (120gb) has been good for well over two years now. Plus, I've dropped the thing several times. I never had a cd-rw work for more than a few weeks or a dvd-rw for a few days due to scratches.

Well I have had 2 external HD's fail in the last 3 years and zero of my DVD's fail. It's all anecdotal evidence.

Most likely the reason your discs started to fail was either you were not taking care of them AT ALL (since they failed so quickly), they

Most likely the reason your discs started to fail was either you were not taking care of them AT ALL (since they failed so quickly), they were just low quality media, and/or your drive was crap.

They were either in a case or in a drive. Still somehow they managed to get scratched. I'd usually have to put three or four copies of everything just make sure I'd be able to copy it off later.

cd-r's I don't have a problem. I burn cds all the time and they still play well, even with visible scratches. I usually use the memorex black ones. For dvd-rs I use various brands. No real problems. Just with rw-s. All the brands I've tried tend to start giving read errors fairly quickly.

They were either in a case or in a drive. Still somehow they managed to get scratched. I'd usually have to put three or four copies of everything just make sure I'd be able to copy it off later.

Hmm, that is very odd, what burning software were you using? Some software...cough Roxio... has a bad habit of writing the file system first then starting to write the actual file contents and FAILING (but without any warnings or messages) and basically saying the burn process completed without a problem. The user

You're right, it shouldn't be modified to 'troll'. It should be flamebait, as per the FAQ.

Here's what the FAQ says about flamebait: "Flamebait -- Flamebait refers to comments whose sole purpose is to insult and enrage. If someone is not-so-subtly picking a fight (racial insults are a dead giveaway), it's Flamebait." My comment was intended to amuse and educate, not to insult or enrage.

Therefore, it should be neither Troll nor Flamebait. The most appropriate moderation is no moderation whatsoever, because

Posting just to spell check someone is generally considered insulting the person you're correcting. So yes, flamebait is correct. Pointing out the difference between GB and Gb on a tech site is like explaining the difference between iodized salt and kosher salt to a chef, so it is not informative whatsoever. There is nothing amusing about the post, just arrogance. Unless of course you were being sarcastic. In that case, I would like to help prove my point with th

I pity you, since your ego is so fragile that you consider a correction an insult.
Personally, I want to know when I am wrong, so that I can get it right next time.

And I pity you, since you can't accept when you're wrong, even when several people tell you you are. I'm sure you know that you're actually wrong in this situation, but it seems that you can own up to it and say "ok, maybe it came off a bit insulting."

If you really just to wanted to correct them, you would simply say "8 Gb = 1 GB". When I'

At least you partly agree with me that the comment had no worth whatsoever. Doesn't sound like you've completely convinced yourself one way or the other though.

Another slashbot with a reading comprehension problem. Is this related to your deciding to simply not read the full comment, or a tiny vocabulary? If you had actually read the moderation FAQ you would have known that it instructs you to concentrate on positive moderation, but it also says that moderation should be reserved for comments which are pa

oh it's even worse than that. who needed to burn 4GB of data before dvd-films were being ripped? i bet, amongst the kiddies, 80 percent of content on DVD-Rs is films and other media (illegally) ripped for giving to their friends. of course, most kiddies nowadays have 120GB external usb harddrives.

so this leaves the question, how are the kiddies going to get 45GB together to put on a blu-ray disk? you have three guesses... (hint, the answer's in the question)

Well, here's the problem as I see it. There just isn't going to be the kind of demand that there were for CD-Rs and RWs, and later DVD-R/Ws, for a long time.Back when CD-Rs first came out, they were huge compared to a hard drive at the time. I remember hooking up my first CD-R, a SCSI job made by Panasonic, when the next biggest storage device I had was a 100MB Zip drive. (And my computer at the time had an 80MB hard drive, but I was at the very end of an upgrade cycle.) The adoption rate of CD-Rs was very

you can buy external hardrives at about 30 cents a gig, on special, so 800 bucks is ~~ 2400 gig of hardrive, or about 53 bluray disks, assuming you can efficiently fill the disks at 45 gig each, neglecting the cost of the disk..

You know, I think that gross margin is really GROSS. Can you believe how much money they are charging for these burners? What a waste. Although they do have to recover some of the costs, but they are pricing themselves out of the market.

Hold out till the price comes down. You don't need 45gigs toss away storage... which is what these are, really. Just get external hard drives and keep swapping, or use Nero Ultimate Enhanced [nero.com] for the DVD set options and encrypted backups. What a great product that is! ZOMG

Hard drives are fine for near-line backups, but they aren't very good for archival use. I expect the cost of drives and media to go down quicker than the cost of hard drives goes down. DVDs are something like a tenth the cost per GB, but the media trading does get to be tedious.

It's a bad idea to rush into selling something that isn't ready. There is no PLAYER! Although this is a real juicy project for an OSS lover............:-)

'Ready' is a matter of requirements. I have no interest in BluRay movies, but I'd love a 45GB burner for backing up raw DV data. Hard drives are too expensive, fragile, and big for that. For archival stuff, if a BluRay blank is under $15, it's cheaper than a reliable hard drive backup.

I think you'll find that DV tapes are cheaper and more reliable. Less work, too.

My projects typically comprise several tapes' worth of data - 4.5 tapes can fit on a BluRay. Yeah, DV is cheaper this year, but next year it probably won't be, per GB. Also, I can store a whole project folder with the edit lists, etc. on BluRay - on DV tapes, only the DV data. Plus, random access. Also, I've had DV tapes gather bad spots in under a year - I hope BluRay will do better. My file folders for CD's also should wo

1) ICT (Image Constraint Token) will make the movie play at half resolution2) Hollywood has agreed to not use ICT before 2012 at earliest if at all3) ICT is per disc, so none of your current discs will be degraded in the futureRunning around like chicken little saying the sky is falling, will have none if not the opposite effect. All you'll do is make normal people try it, see that you're wrong and think you're some sort of wierdo conspiracy crackpot. HDCP won't affect many, most won't notice it and for the

1) ICT (Image Constraint Token) will make the movie play at half resolution
2) Hollywood has agreed to not use ICT before 2012 at earliest if at all
3) ICT is per disc, so none of your current discs will be degraded in the future

The GP might have had FUDdy intentions, but the GP was referring to HDCP and DVI. Note that ICT applies to analog inputs/outputs, not digital. Without HDCP, Blu-ray movies will not play back at all over a digital cable today. Not in 2012. Today. If you want to play a Blu-ray movie from your computer's Blu-ray drive and you don't have HDCP, you must use VGA or DVI-to-VGA converter. Who the hell wants to use VGA on their new LCD monitor, or switch between DVI and VGA just for watching Blu-ray movies?

How long would it take to burn a 45GB disc? Blu-ray.com says 1x is 36Mbs, so that would be 4.5MB/s. 45GB is approximately 45000MB, so it would take about 10,000 seconds at max speed the whole way. So that's like what, 2 hours and 50 minutes? Not that bad for massive backup if you just start it when you go to bed.

Neglecting whatever increased power requirements the new optical drive might introduce, 2.5 hours is cutting it close for burning on a battery. Now certainly it's always possible to plug in when you're on the road, but if you have a socket nearby, an external hard disk can be plugged in too (or you can beat this by using a "self-powered" USB disk).

Not to mention that, at best, you could have ~3 Blu-Ray discs worth of data stored on your hard disk.

>> System administrators and database administrators can archive and retrieve large amounts of data on 1 convenient disk. Blu-ray is the next generation of storage technology and it's available today, only from Fastmac.Really? Last I looked I can now get a terrabyte of hard disk space under 300 USD. If I want a terrabyte of RAID it will probably cost me 400 USD, maybe 500 USD. A terrabyte of blueray is 20 DVD's burning at 8x. Oh yeah I am going to pay 800 USD and 20x CD's + more time to do the same ba

CD's, DVD's are history for backing up purposes. Even the original intention of CD's for music is starting to become irrelevant. Times have changed.

No they haven't.

I still own a 40MB external SCSI hard drive and from then until now external hard disks have always been better value for money than optical media. However external hard disks require cables, a power supply (for the large terabyte drives) and a huge form factor. Whereas I can fit 20 BluRay discs in a CD wallet (1TB) and have no problem carrying t

Apple hasn't caught up yet. It's a third party drive, but it's nice to be able to retrofit old powerbook to Blu-ray, although I seriously doubt if these older systems (back to G3 Pismo) have enough juice to operate it practically.

Fastmac has beaten Apple to the Blu-Ray punch and has a new slimline Blu-Ray drive that works in PowerBooks, iBooks, Mac Minis, the MacBook Pro 17", and a few other systems. [. ..] Fastmac says that playing Blu-Ray movies isn't currently supported since there is no software player.

Yeah, they totally beat Apple to the punch of selling a product that the OS doesn't support at all. Hurp. It's not that Apple can't get hardware from vendors, it's that they have to implement the software side as well, which isn't very likely until the next big OS update. I mean, we're kinda at the end of the Tiger line, here, after all.

How is this new for Mac users? 90% of the hardware and software is not supported by OSX.

BTW the drive has native OSX drivers, and can burn and read from the drive, there is just no Movie player. (Remember when people were making fun of Vista supporting HD because it require MFR DRM, Mac users get ready for you turn.)

I want to see some very heavy results from independent testing labs that give me an idea that if I put data on such disks that it will be readable in at least 5 years @ 99.99% reliability.

If not, hard drives are way better as they read and write at far higher speeds.

Hard drives will ALWAYS be more reliable than any flat piece of plastic. But you can't throw a hard drive in an envelope and mail it for $0.41 in the US like you can a CD / DVD / HD|BR-DVD. Families enjoy this because they can send home movies around the nation very easily, and business find it useful for mailing out data that would otherwise take a long time to send over their already busy internet connection.

Yes, home broadband connections regularly have apalling upstream... Really, all connections should be the same up and down.As for 7 hours, your connection need not be useless during a heavy upload depending on your router etc... And, most home users are either at work or sleeping more than 7 hours a day, and most companies don't need their connections at night.

I saw the mac, had some mod points and thought that i'd revenge myself for the rabid mods who down vote me every time i poo poo macs, no matter how logic, right, obvious, or stupid i may feel at the time that i click the submit reply button.

However, if this means that i could install a *cough* open source player to play blu-ray discs on a pc that wasn't crippled by drm issues *cough vista coughcough*, it might be worth my next laptop replacement.

I agree. I do own a couple Macs and I get shot down on several occasions any time I said something that members of the Mac cult disagree with.I don't assume that Apple is good and right all the time, and I don't assume they are wrong all the time. I think it's unfortunate that there are so many cultists out there, pro- or anti-Apple or Mac.

I think the open source people have had access to BR drives, they've been available for many months now. They seem to be more the type to try to make a free player, a

If it's as slow as burning a DVD is, then not really. I gave up on optical media for backup long ago because it's just too slow. I just use an extra hard drive instead. Does anybody know if burning Bluray is any faster per GB than burning a DVD?

Does anybody know if burning Bluray is any faster per GB than burning a DVD?

If burning Blu-ray at 4x speed, then it's about as fast (per GB) as burning a DVD at 18x. However, the only Blu-ray burner reviews I've seen have only supported 2x burning speed with possible 4x speed via future firmware updates.

Then you consider that I can buy the six dual-layer DVDs for about $1.50 each ($9 total), whereas a single "sweet-burnin'" dual-layer Blu-Ray disc (the kind you need to hold 45 GB) is gonna cost me at LEAST thirty bucks--four times as much for the same amount of data.

Hm. When you consider the trend, I think I can hold off for, say, two years when Blu-Ray or HD-DVD or whoever wins that war costs about what a dual-layer DVD burner costs now (and ditto for the discs).

Burning 45 GB onto just one disc will be "sweet," but for the nonce I can stand burning six d-l DVDs without laying out the $800 smackers (esp. since I've already bought the DVD burner with my latest notebook computer anyway).

Okay, I can get a dual-layer DVD Burner for about seventy bucks [amazon.com] currently, which means I can burn about 8 GB (or 18% of 45 GB) for less than one-tenth of the price--nearly twice as "cost effective."

Egad! You need to stop shopping at Amazon for your computer accessories, because you can get a DL DVD burner at NewEgg for $31.99 [newegg.com] - it was right on the front page. It even has LightScribe, too. I bought a DL burner months ago for $40 on NewEgg (no Lightscribe, though).

I could be completely wrong, I don't know Apple's stance but I'd imagine Apple just aren't ready to commit to Bluray yet, they're probably waiting for more mature drives that support both HDDVD and Bluray together or waiting for a more definitive winner in the format wars, right now it's just too early to take sides and I doubt Apple want the headache of producing/supporting systems that have either Bluray or HDDVD and not both in, I can see it now:

Customer: I bought this HD movie and it doesn't work in my drive can you help?Apple: Sir, it's an HDDVD, you have a Bluray driveCustomer: But my Bluray drive is for HD isn't it?Apple: Yes, but HDDVD and Bluray are different formatsCustomer: But I want to be able to play HD movies!Apple: *sigh*

I'm not sure to be honest - you could well be right, but it's probably worth noting that MS are part of the HDDVD alliance yet have publicly noted they'll likely release a Bluray solution for the 360 if that were to become the prominent format.Companies behind the two alliances that aren't part of the manufacturing process seem a lot more willing to sway between formats as the market allows, I'd guess Apple is in the same boat - whilst they may be a Bluray backer, if it did flop I doubt they'd be afraid to

At this point in time MacOS X does not have the necessary drivers for either HD-DVD or BluRay. I also don't see MacOS X gaining the necessary drivers until the delivery of Leopard, which is now slated for October. For this reason I don't see any chance of seeing Apple providing either drive as an option until then. At that point in time I would not be surprised that if the drives are offered, then it will be a build-to-order option, given the cost and the fact the competition between HD-DVD and BluRay is ju

I'm assuming that as a condition of allowing Macs to play Blu-Ray disks, Sony will require Apple to make Leopard require all drivers to be digitally signed so that fake device drivers can't be used to break the DRM. Same reason as Vista 64.

I honestly hope that someone either builds a large quantum computer or finds a fast discrete logarithm algorithm soon before asymmetric encryption ruins consumer rights.

I'm assuming that as a condition of allowing Macs to play Blu-Ray disks, Sony will require Apple to make Leopard require all drivers to be digitally signed so that fake device drivers can't be used to break the DRM.

I guess we'll see whether XNU for Darwin 9 gets released. I was half expecting Darwin 8 to go on hold indefinitely to protect the MPAA's precious bodily fluids.

I think it would be dangerous for Apple to make a software Blu Ray player. You know that would get hacked in a second, and the Blu Ray Consortium or whoever has no qualms about revoking keys. Can you imagine the hit to Apple's "coolness" when they keep getting their keys revoked and customers have to make sure to install the latest updates just so they can play their discs? Imagine every few months popping in a new disc and being presented with "please download the latest patches from Apple" screen right wh